Reflections
by Blonde Dr.Who-Guru With Brains
Summary: A middle class teenage girl looks back on her time at Waterloo Road Comprehensive School.


If anyone who sees this doesn't know the TV programme 'Waterloo Road', they don't know what they've missed. For the benefit of the same people who haven't seen it for whatever reason, 'Waterloo Road' is about various teenagers who attend Waterloo Road Comprehensive. It's a rough, ill-equipped school and the students are pretty much all thoroughy working class. The school is fictional and is set in Rochdale town. My character is also fictional.

Enjoy!

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**Part 1**

I came to Waterloo Road almost two years ago now. From the very beginning, I was marked out as an outsider. The teachers liked me and the kids hated me. I've always been good at school-work, so the headmaster and my subject teachers were pleased that I was boosting their abominable figures. Needless to say, I found lessons easy, and because of that, the students thought I was a swot and up myself. I consistently got grade As and Bs in my work, so they got jealous.

It started with snide remarks. After a matter of weeks, it escalated and turned physical. Girls who were jealous of my hair being naturally blonde and of my academic ability started deliberately bashing me with their bags in the corridors, and one hard-faced boy with stupid patterns shaved into his hair once tried to trip me up at break-time. It sounds like nothing, but when you're on the receiving end of this kind of bullying, the worst part of it is wondering if it's all in your head and you're imagining it.

After being scared of bullies for a month, I found solace in the deputy headteacher, Mr. Treneman. Like me, he had come to Waterloo Road from a high-achieving, middle-class school, and had received plenty of stick from people who didn't really care about good results, so we had some common ground. I was able to talk to him about the other students picking on me. He took the time to listen, and in return he gained my respect and trust. In all the time I spent at Waterloo Road, I only made a few friends, including Mr. Treneman, who had given me the support that qualifies a good friend. The first friend I made, who was my own age, was the girl who was asked to chaperone me in my first week. Her name was Mika, and she was very pretty. She and her boyfriend, Brett, helped me find my way around and we seemed to get on well. Mika had a younger sister, Chlo. She was sweet, but I often thought she did too much to please her boyfriend. Their mum was nice, too. Although Mika and Chlo took their dad's surname, their parents had never married, and so their mum remained Izzie Redpath. She was also the school's drama teacher, and she helped me to get into the drama club, which I enjoyed immensely, but more about drama later.

I studied two languages at GCSE, French and Spanish. The French teacher, Miss Haydock, was useless. Everything the class was learning, I had already learned. Miss Haydock could barely teach a load of underachieving students, let alone set any higher level work for me. Needless to say, I got bored. Mika and Brett were in my class and, while Mika struggled with languages, Brett was good, and had already taken his French GCSE. We often helped Mika, but sometimes we would just talk and trade French insults. Brett taught me some rude French jokes, and in return, I taught him some Spanish ones. We would laugh until we cried sometimes, and one time, Miss Haydock got so sick of us, she sent us to the cooler. It didn't stop us from sniggering though.

Then my dad started drinking. He had lost his job at the bank he worked at, and he would go to the pub in the evening and not return until gone midnight, usually blind drunk. His job was the reason we had moved. There had been some redundancies at the London branch of the bank, and Dad didn't want to be the next one to be fired. After having decided on a change of scene, we packed up and moved to Rochdale. Mum had wanted to make me a day-girl at the nearest boarding school, but Dad said no, I could go to the local comprehensive to get rid of the airs and graces that my last school had given me. Naturally, I was incensed, but I decided that it would be better to go to the comprehensive than to go to the posh school, become a total toff and leave school totally unprepared for the real world.

Dad's drinking coincided with me getting the role of Juliet in the school's production of 'Romeo and Juliet'. I love acting, and I also love studying Shakespeare, so it was lucky for me that we started studying the play in English. One night, Dad came back from the pub earlier than normal, having been kicked out for fighting. It was half past nine when he got back and I was still up, practicing my lines. He heard me muttering to myself, and he came into my room.

"What rubbish are you learning now?" He asked roughly, swaying slightly.

"It's Shakespeare, Dad." I said, "This is the work of a genius."

"Load of crap, if you ask me." Dad said, wafting beer fumes towards my wardrobe.

I was starting to get annoyed. "Well, I didn't ask you." I said shortly. "Now, if you don't mind, I need to finish this scene."

Dad's face changed from mildly annoyed to thunderous.

"Don't you EVER talk to me like that!" He bellowed, and before I could move, his fist landed on my cheekbone. I fell onto my bed, white-faced and terrified. He had never hit me before. His manner changed again, as swiftly as before and he stumbled out of the room, looking shocked.

The next morning, I left the house early, keen to avoid Dad. I took some fruit with me and had it when I got to school, an hour earlier than normal. In the toilets, I inspected the bruise on my face. It was quite sizeable and was a nasty shade of yellow.

I felt safe in school, so I took my copy of 'Romeo and Juliet' to my English classroom to read. After about quarter of an hour, Mr. Treneman turned up. As well as being deputy headteacher, he also taught English and I had been put into his GCSE class.

"Morning." He said, opening his briefcase, then stopped when I looked up. "My God, what happened to your face?"

My first instinct was to lie, but we were close, so I told him the truth. He was shocked, and he came and sat next to me.

"Have you told anyone?"

I shook my head. "Only you."

He lifted his hand to my face. "Can I . . . ?"

I nodded in reply. He rested his hand on the side of face and gently passed his thumb over the bruise. A knot in my stomach squirmed and unravelled. I felt myself blush as I forcibly stopped myself from looking at his mouth. Honestly! In all the time we'd been friends, my feelings had never crossed the line into fancying him. He noticed that my cheeks had gone pink and smiled.

"What are you blushing about?" He was ready to tease me, I could tell. I fobbed him off.

"Andrew Treneman, what are you insinuating?" I affected an upper-middle class voice. A cheeky look came into his soft brown eyes.

"I don't know, what _am_ I insinuating?" He said teasingly, poking me gently in the waist.

"You tell me." I replied, poking him back. He caught me by the wrist as I went to poke him again, and signalled to me to be quiet. We heard heeled shoes clipping towards the classroom, and seconds later, Kim Campbell, Head of Pastoral Care and Mr. Treneman's closest friend on the staff team, poked her head around the door.

"Morning you two. You're early." She gave Mr. Treneman an affectionate smile, then her eyes flitted to me and her smile faded.

"Blimey, what happened to you?" She clipped across the room to where we sat and turned my head to look at the bruise.

"It's nothing, miss." I assured her, not meeting hers or Mr. Treneman's eyes. "I slipped in the shower, that's all."

She nodded slowly. "Right. Well, if anything happens, come and talk to me, yeah?" Satisfied with my excuse, she turned to Mr. Treneman. "Can I have a quick word, Andrew?"

For the rest of the day, I told everyone who asked the same lie. My last lesson of the day was English, and at the end, Mr. Treneman held me back.

"Why did you lie to Miss Campbell this morning? She's the one person who can help you with this."

"Why do you think?" I answered angrily, "I don't want to risk the whole school knowing that my drunk of a dad is whacking me around!"

Mr. Treneman looked embarrassed. "Sorry," he said, "I should've thought."

"Yeah, well," I said, zipping my bag up, "it doesn't matter at the moment." I hitched my bag onto my shoulder. "I wonder if you could help me with something?"

"I'll try." He said, "It's my job."

"I've been having a bit of trouble learning some of my lines for the play. I was wondering if you could give me a hand."

"Wouldn't Miss Redpath be better for this?"

"Well, maybe, but I thought you'd be able to help me with what some of the lines mean, and getting the meter and speed right."

"Right, well, um, tomorrow after lessons alright with you?"

"That'd be great." I smiled at him. "Thanks, sir."

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Well, there you have it. I'm no further in making any headway with the rest, so if you want to read more, I'm afraid you'll have to be very patient. So, anyway, please press that button down there and tell me what you think!


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